A Single Man

It was French poet and writer Lamartine who said "one person is missing and the whole word seems depopulated". George Falconer lives in such a world as he's mourning the man who has shared his life for sixteen years... and the grieving process has taken him to an existential dead-end. His Jim (Matthew Goode) whom we see lying in a snowy road after a car accident was more than a life companion but a soul-mate. With him, George had found as perfect contentment as perfect could get, and with that tragic accident, a part of himself died too; the loss is so overwhelming that George intends to kill himself. Colin Firth is the titular single man, resigned to end a life that has lost all purpose.

It is a bleak introduction to Tom Ford's adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's novel, a powerful examination of the struggle to get over a loss but what would you expect from a movie whose first screen title is "Fade to Black"? The movie is emotionally loaded and restrains itself so much you can sense the electricity before the storm, but we get to have a few sunny flashbacks to understand that George wasn't born a misanthropic sourpuss. That the film features a same-sex couple is almost incidental, there's no sex scene and the smaller moments the better: a cozy conversation on a sofa, a discussion about the past in a beach, yet "A Single Man" couldn't have been as powerful with a man and a woman and for that, you can't do without the film's context.

The story is set in the midst of the Cuba missiles crisis when the world's future was hanging on a thread and America was the leader of the Free World, but with a rather selective approach of freedom as far as personal lifestyles went. A man couldn't live his sexuality if it wasn't the "right one", living as a homosexual was an ordeal in the public sphere and in private, it was tougher to find someone. Yet George found one and could conceal under a façade of pure clean-cut British rigidity his real self. With Jim, he found not just love but authenticity in a world that relied too much on slogans (mostly political), appearances and hypocrisy. It's interesting that the couple in this film can work as a metaphor for being free or true to our nature under a society not much traditional as it was reactionary (American values against the Red Scare).

There's an important scene where George lectures his student about fear, using World War II and racism as examples, and the notion of fear is connected to causes that can be either real or factice. The point is that everything has a cause, not all the causes are real, but they exist as fabricated. What matters then is the truth, tending to it, whether through History or from experience: one of his student Kenny (Nicholas Hoult) hates the past and is scared by the future (during the Cuban crisis, many people were), what's left from it? Maybe the present and the way it might build him to his own realizations and understanding of the world. This is basically the premise of that harrowing journey where George contemplates his life and the probability of its termination.

And if anything, the film isn't about the struggles of homosexuals in the 60s, though there are references to the prevailing homophobia, it's about someone who lost the balance of his life, the personal tunnel to his own truth, the link between the present and the future, and condemned himself to isolation then suicide because there was no future to conceive with anyone. He has a friend named Charley (Julianne Moore), she's divorced, disillusioned about life, but she loves him and for all the joyful and fun moments they spend together (Firth and Moore have great chemistry), George can't connect the present with her to any bright vision of the future. The film says something about the value of the present as one step that makes you climb the stairs of your life. It's only after he meets again Kenny, the student who admires him (and a little more) that he starts feeling the stairs can be worth climbing.

But that's only an interpretation of the story, one must take the film at face value and appreciate its "present"; a man drowning in an ocean of loneliness that gives its full meaning to the title, so isolated a man that he actually raises the interest of people around him because -and maybe George doesn't realize it himself- he's still part of his world. The film makes no secret about George's planned suicide but it's expressed in an interesting way: he lives the last day at its fullest, staring at muscular tennis players' bodies as if he was photographing them in his mind, a beautiful blonde girl's hair, he caresses a dog who reminds him of his friend's. These moments are so intense that it might leave the impression that Tom Ford over-designed his film, made it too stylish for its own good as if he was trying to channel Bergman.

I didn't mind that actually, it's interesting that the more intensely George looked at his world, the more it meant his preparation to death, looking at the pink smog of L.A., he says that even the ugliest thing have a beautiful side, as if people focused on beauty had the ugliest thoughts and missed the best part of what living is about. When he meets the young Spanish model, it's romantic in an artificial and abrupt way, when he meets Kenny again, they go swimming, the present doesn't reveal any truth but shows him a way like it almost saved his life at a tragicomic moment involving a gun and the right pillow position to pull the trigger. If you can't envision a bright future, trust the present's small moments to take you there...

Tom Ford, you surprised me. I don't really follow the fashion world too closely at all, so although I naturally knew his name, I wasn't familiar with his creations. I haven't read the Christopher Isherwood novel (yet), so Colin Firth and Julianne Moore were the ones who actually got me excited for this project. And I wasn't disappointed – it actually exceeded all my expectations, and alongside Jane Campion's "Bright Star" (which unfortunately is being almost completely overlooked this awards season), it's the most poetic 2009 film I have seen so far.

Firth, always elegant and fascinating, plays George Falconer, a British professor in 1960's Los Angeles trying to cope with the death of his long-term partner, Jim (Matthew Goode). It's been eight months since Jim's death, and George decided to end his life by the end of the day – and it's this day we see in this admirable film. George spends time with his best friend Charley (the always wonderful Julianne Moore), with whom he had something in the past (and still has hopes of winning him over again), and now is an unhappy divorcée. A young pupil, Kenny (Nicholas Hoult, who has grown up a lot since "About a Boy" and "The Weather Man"), who clearly is infatuated with George, harasses him until he finally gives him the attention he craves. These two different encounters will be decisive for George. As sad as the overall tone and the theme of mourning can be, "A Single Man" is by no means depressing. Ford uses and abuses of "artsy", but very efficient and intriguing camera angles, and a classy score by Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski. Eyes, lips are shown in evidence throughout the film, and naturally, the costumes are all superb.

George's long day's journey reminds me a lot of Virginia Woolf's classic "Mrs. Dalloway". Marleen Gorris was able to do a correct but somewhat cold adaptation of Woolf's novel in 1997 (scripted by Woolf scholar and talented actress Eileen Atkins, featuring the magnificent Vanessa Redgrave in the title role), but I thought she wasn't much to blame for the film's coldness since that's one of the most complex novels to be translated to the screen. After seeing "A Single Man", I even dare to say Tom Ford could do an interesting and very personal adaptation of "Mrs. Dalloway". Also, this is one of the sexiest films since Alfonso Cuaron's "Y Tu Mama Tambien" (2001) and Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Dreamers" (2003), and Nicholas Hoult's incandescent presence has a lot to do with that. He gives an efficient, brave performance for an actor his age, and although I'm sure Jamie Bell ("Billy Elliot"), who was the first choice for the role, would've been terrific, Hoult doesn't disappoint. It's not every day we're given a film with such emotional intensity and exuberant sensuality, and "A Single Man" proves that Tom Ford is certainly a promising director, having given us not just a great first film, but one also one of the year's finest and most unusual creations. A film to be felt and celebrated, and I can't wait for the DVD - it's a keeper. 10/10.

A stunning outing for Tom Ford. The images are, clearly, out of an aesthete's mind without being shallow, ever. I believe there is a dramatic reason behind every frame. Colin Firth, looking truly handsome, goes through a day of torment with remarkable civility. I felt involved and shaken and couldn't help but make mine his pain. The flashbacks with Matthew Goode are truly vivid and truthful. This is a step forward in explaining through images that love is love no matter who you are, where you come from or what your circumstances are. It could have been a man and a woman, the fact that it's a man and a man is almost irrelevant. We recognize the feel of it and Colin Firth's performance is the magic stroke that makes that not only possible but natural. It is a sensational debut for fashion star Tom Ford. True to himself an artist that promises great, wonderful things for the future. I can't wait.

I've seen "A Single Man" twice already at different screenings and I believe I will see it again and again. Yes, for me is one of those films. Thank you Tom Ford and thank you Colin Firth. I love Colin and my favorite performance of his dates back to 1989 "Apartment Zero". George Falconer, Colin's character in "A Single Man" seems to me the flip side of Adrian Leduc, Colin's character in "Apartment Zero". George has had a real life and grieves the death of his companion. Adrian Leduc never had a companion and his grief is based on his total inability to connect with people. George believes that human connection is at the center of everything and puts that thought into practice. Adrian worships James Dean, George doesn't think that much of James Dean, he actually says it. Adrian wears white shirts made of cheap material and he launders them himself. George wears impeccably cut white shirts that he has professionally laundered. They seem tiny details but they become overwhelming when you know both characters. George even hurts himself and wears a band aid just like Adrian during the last 15 minutes of "Apartment Zero" I love Colin Firth because he's an actor that can give you so much doing, seemingly, so little. It compel us to participate and include our own thoughts and feelings. The love of George for his lover is as pungent and real as anything I've ever seen on the screen. It is a cinematic triumph and as I'm writing about it I feel a sort of urge to see it again, just as it happened to me when I saw "Apartment Zero" for the first time. I felt then that Colin deserved an Oscar nomination for Adrian, he will get it for George. This is the first comment I ever wrote and it comes out of a profound need to share this emotion. When movies can do that, film lovers all over the world have real reason to celebrate and I'm celebrating.

I loved Isherwood's novel (it's a novel, not a short story as a previous poster claimed) ever since it appeared back in 1964, to scathing reviews. Gay love wasn't taken seriously back then. Stonewall was five years away. But Isherwood was always his own man. Over the years I've mentioned the book to gay filmmakers, several of whom knew it and liked it. But all were chary of adapting a stream-of-consciousness narrative to the screen. That Tom Ford (of all people) has taken it on and done so well by it is rather astonishing. Yes, being the Fashion God that he is the film looks lovely. But it isn't all "look." Ford really understands what Isherwood was driving at. And while casting an actor as great as Colin Firth is a logical production decision, knowing what to do with him requires real talent. And Ford has talent by the ton. Matthew Goode is lovely. Nicholas Hoult a real surprise -- especially if you know him only for "About a Boy." And Julianne Moore is perfect as always. So much better (and more important) than "Brokeback Mountain."